07 Geographical Solution
by Thescarredman
Summary: The Lynch 'family' moves to a new hideout, half of them with only the clothes on their backs. But they still manage to bring plenty of baggage with them.
1. Unloading

Saturday March 25 2006  
3 miles southwest of Ramona, California

The black Mercedes G fled down sparsely lit thoroughfares and lightless back roads, trending northward through orchards and scrubland in the small hours. Bobby, at the wheel, was the only upright occupant. The others, awake or asleep, were stretched out on the seats or floor, or curled up in the cargo compartment, out of sight.

Curled up on the back seat, Caitlin's head was only a foot from Anna's, who lay face up on the floor. Caitlin whispered, "Poor Sarah. I bet she'd rather be staked out on an anthill."

"She'll tough it out somehow, I'm sure." As the car passed under a streetlight, the floor behind the front seats was briefly illuminated; Anna looked as serene as a Buddha.

"You knew she'd be pigheaded about riding shotgun. You planned this." She grinned down at her. "Remind me _never _to tick you off."

Anna grinned back. "Caitlin, I don't know _what_ you're thinking of me. I'd have been glad to explain and offer her a choice, if only she hadn't rushed off and made it so hard to save her from herself. But let's face it, I'm only human."

In the back, bundled together by bags of clothes, Eddie and Roxanne lay on their sides like nested spoons; her tiny rear was pressed firmly into his stomach, and his arms were wrapped around her. His hands began to explore. He whispered, "Do you think she planned _this_, too?"

She rested her hands on his. "Oh, I _hope _so."

"Okay, Anna," Caitlin began in a low speaking voice. "You're not a housekeeper, so what are you, really?"

"Beg pardon? You're saying I don't know how to keep house?"

"Come on. I mean you're not _just_ a housekeeper."

"There's no _just _about it; it's a job worthy of anyone. Keeping house for you guys, sometimes I _need _a twenty-hour day."

"Anna …"

"Okay, okay. Everything I know about housekeeping I learned after Jack brought me home. "

"And they didn't build you to guard warehouses; night watchmen don't need antiaircraft guns."

"Hon, do you know what IO had in mind for _you_? All of you."

"Something like Nicole and her brother. Special agents, soldiers."

"You'd make lousy soldiers."

"I should hope."

"I mean it. Soldiers are tools; to use a tool effectively, you have to know what you can do with it. That's why standardization is so important to military organizations. Even in a modern army, with a lot of specialization and technical expertise, the men who make the plans have to know exactly how the gears mesh. You can't toss in a bunch of people with unheard-of abilities, no two alike, and expect them to do less harm than good."

"They'd have to put us in special teams." Bobby spoke with quiet certainty, as if the subject were one he'd given a lot of thought. "Train us to work together. Is that why we were all teamed up in groups of eight or less?"

"Yes. Gold star on your book report. What were they going to have you do?"

"Special assignments. Dirty, sneaky, underhanded stuff, obviously. Navy SEAL stuff, with a little James Bond thrown in."

"Very, very close. Think of something that even SEALs can't do, because they might be caught and identified as working for our government."

"Mission Impossible?"

"The boys in IO's Planning Directorate aren't that imaginative. For years and years, IO has been pursuing an alternative to diplomacy or military intervention that they call the 'SPT' initiative. That stands for 'Surgical Personal Targeting'."

"Assassination."

"Exactly. Go straight to the source of the trouble and eliminate it: it was Miles Craven's Holy Grail. Problem is, the sources of trouble don't _want _to be eliminated, and modern protective security being as good as it is, any method that's sure to work is bound to reveal the country that uses it. Laser-guided bombs don't leave much doubt who sent them."

"But if a guy's car gets hit by a plasma bolt and the gas tank explodes, they'll never figure out what happened, much less who did it. That's sick."

"Anna," Caitlin said, "this is good to know, even if it makes me queasy. But you dodged my question."

"No, I didn't. Imagine a slightly different scenario: the Supreme Leader of some country that's been yanking Uncle Sam's beard is rolling through his capital city. Typical modern motorcade with two to four decoy vehicles, along with the one the Fuehrer's in. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all five vehicles get an antitank round that kills everybody."

Caitlin gasped. "You!"

"Or some twelve-year-old in a "WWJD" T-shirt, who becomes a fifteen-year-old girl five minutes after the Big Boom; that's why they made me so small. Parallel programs. I was never deployed, so I guess they pinned all their hopes on you. IO has research projects going on everything you can think of, and even their failures are spectacular. But they never throw anything away. That storage facility I was in was full of prototypes, working models, whatever; ideas that didn't pan out for one reason or other. They put me in there and told me to guard the place, but really, I was just one more item in dead storage; they didn't even provide me with a way to renew my power. I guess I was supposed to wander around inside until I ran down."

"Good thing Mr. Lynch came for you when he did."

"I'll say. I stayed on standby, mostly, conserving power, but six years is a long time between recharges."

"_Six years?_"

"Yup." Her voice became pensive. "It wasn't all that bad, compared to the year I was going through performance tests. I hated that steel box they locked me into at night. And as soon as I stepped out in the morning, there was good old Gunny Grissom, pointing some kind of EMP rifle at my face, ready to blow my brains out if I made a false move. They were pretty scared of me, I guess."

Caitlin reached for the little android, grasped her hand.

Anna smiled up at her. "Don't sweat it, hon. A lot of people have crappy childhoods. I'm making up for it now. Running for my life with you guys is bliss by comparison."

"Roxy? Is this the story she told you, back before the rest of us knew?"

"Um…I got more detail. But I still thought she was flesh-and-blood at the time. It didn't sound a whole lot different from what they did to us." Roxanne's voice was blurred, by sleep or something else that was making concentration difficult. "Don' be pissy about it, Sis."

"Sarah," Anna said, "you haven't weighed in. What do you think of my little sob story? Sarah?"

"She's sleeping," Bobby said softly. "After all that bitching, she falls asleep."

"Guess she managed to get comfortable after all. Bobby, I know you're a perfect gentleman …"

"There's two adults in the front seat, Anna. Eyes on the road, hands on the controls." Then, so softly only Anna could hear: "God, she's beautiful."

-0-

Bobby watched in the rear view as Kat and Anna swung open the rear door and looked inside; over the back seat, he could see them only from the waist up. Anna cooed, "Oooh. They're so _cute_ like that, like puppies. I hate to wake them up."

Kat didn't look nearly so happy. "Where he's got his hand, you think that's cute?"

"I think," she said, "that his hand has been there a hundred times, probably with Roxanne guiding it into place. Caitlin Fairchild, how _do_ you suppose your sister kept her virtue before you showed up?"

"I don't think she ever fell for a guy this hard before."

"And he doesn't deserve her, is that it?" Then: "He's not the class clown he makes himself out to be, you know. The boy's got hidden depths. And your sister's no lightweight, if you'll pardon the pun; that's just joie de vie. She's not the type to give herself away to be popular, or to keep a boy from turning to someone else. Also, shameless snoop that I am, I find no evidence that either of them is using contraception."

"That's _good_ news?"

"Definitely. Roxanne doesn't talk about it much, but she knows she began as risky behavior between two careless people; she resents not having been conceived in love. So, while I admit I might be wrong about how far she'll go to keep Eddie's interest, I'm _certain_ she won't risk getting pregnant."

"I just don't want her to get hurt."

"Hon, do you know anybody who ever fell in love who _didn't_ get hurt?"

Kat turned, looking right down on her. "Yes." Then she bent down and pushed something, presumably Eddie; the car rocked forward from the force of the shove.

"Gaa!"

"Wake up, you two. It's time to change cars. Take a few bags with you."

Roxy sat up first, tucking her shirt in; she caught his eyes on her in the rear view. He winked, and she smiled at him and climbed out, pulling a sleepy Grungester out with her. The other two followed.

He looked down at Sarah, arms curled around him, head in his lap. _All good things come to an end._ "Sarah. Time to get up."

She stirred, but instead of rising, she curled more tightly against him. "Hmm?"

_If this gets any harder, someone else is gonna have to get her out of the car, cuz I won't be able to make myself do it._ "Rise and shine. Up and at em. Come on, I'm tired too." He placed his hand at the back of her head; he'd only meant to keep her from banging it on the wheel if she woke suddenly; but his fingers had a mind of their own, twining in her hair …

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up at him. "Where are we?"

"Some dilapidated old farm. Our new car's stashed in the barn. If I take my hand away, will you smack your head on the wheel?"

"No. Thanks." She started to lever herself up, but only got as far as his sternum. "I can't-" She dropped back. "I lost the circulation. I can't use my arms."

"Oh, jeez. I can … I can maybe call for Kat …"

"No! I feel ridiculous enough already; I don't need someone to come pry us apart. Can you … do something? I just need to get my arms down for a few minutes."

"I'll see what I can do. But I don't have a lot of room to work here, so don't think I'm taking liberties, okay?" he wedged an arm underneath and lifted, which brought her head against his chest. With his other hand, he pulled her arms off his thigh and flank and put them down along her sides. His heart sped up as he cradled her in his arms, holding her maybe a little tighter than necessary. He swallowed. "Should start getting better now. Tingling yet?"

"Yes," she answered, her voice almost impossible to hear because her face was buried in his chest. "Definitely." Then, "Bobby, do you ever wish we got along better?"

He held a breath and let it out. "About half a dozen smart answers went by just then. This is one of those does-this-dress-make-me-look-fat questions, right?" He could feel his heart sinking; she was about to pick a fight. "Don't, Sarah." _Don't sour it; just let me hold you a little longer, until your hands come back, and we can both get out of the car feeling good about this moment. And maybe, if we can quit tearing the foundation apart, we can build something like a relationship._

A line appeared between those sculpted eyebrows. "I just asked a question. You don't have to act like I'm about to attack you." Then she did. "Sometimes you talk as if I'm a total bitch, you know that? And lately it's getting worse. The whole _team_ seems to be turning on me. Maybe I just need to leave."

"Or maybe you need an intervention." He knew it was crazy and useless, but his mouth just wouldn't shut. "If _all_ the cars are headed straight at you, maybe _you're_ the one in the wrong lane."

Her eyes flashed. "I didn't create this situation." She squirmed, got a hand between them and pushed. He opened his arms and she was gone; sitting right next to him in the seat, but she might as well have been halfway around the world. She fumbled at the door handle and disappeared into the darkness, taking his heart with her.

He laid his forehead on the wheel, trying not to think or feel. Presently, the interior lights came on as the driver's door opened, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Bobby." Caitlin's voice, gentler than Sarah's at its sweetest. "Bobby, I'll drive now. Just put this one in the barn when I pull out, okay? Then come to the car. Get in back and rest."

"Yeah. M'okay, just tired. Gimme a minute."

Her hand slid across his shoulders, holding him. Something dropped in his lap: a tissue box. She pulled one out, slid the fake glasses off his nose, and dabbed at his cheeks.

"Heh. You always carry those?"

"Sarah's sitting in the shotgun seat, not talking, breathing like she's got something stuck in her throat, just staring out the window at nothing; she _bumped_ into the door getting in. I figured there'd be a train wreck down here. How do you guys _do_ this to each other? _Why_?"

"Some malign influence from beyond the stars, I don't doubt."

"Yeah, slaves to karma, that's us." She withdrew from the car, and turned to face the barn. "If this is what love is like, I'm well out of it."

"It's not like this all the time, Kat."

"No, only for certain people."

"I didn't pick her, Kat. It just happened."

"Uh huh. Shared danger, close quarters, all of that BS. Bobby, you were smitten as soon as you met her. Everybody saw it. If you can't resist gorgeous brunettes, why didn't you ever take up with Nicole? She made _her_ interest pretty clear."

He sat up, feeling a little better. Kat was good medicine for a case of oh-poor-me's; she was so good at shrugging off her own troubles, she made self-pity seem ridiculous. "Not my type, I guess."

"Puh-_lease_. She's _everybody's _type; every straight male's, anyway. You must have been the only guy in the _complex_ who didn't daydream about a night with our 'guidance counselor'."

"And maybe that's the only reason she chased me. Kat, Nicole Callahan is extremely hot; she is also extremely creepy. She made me uncomfortable _before_ our 'school for gifted kids' turned into a concentration camp. When the armed guards that came out of the woodwork looked to _her_ for orders, I wasn't a bit surprised. Even before I knew she was one of Ivana's attack dogs, I wouldn't have dated her on a bet."

"What about Jen, or Natalie? A smile and a whisper from you, and either one of them would have been sneaking into your room after lights out."

"Not into one night stands."

"Well, what's wrong with Melanie?"

"Not a thing. I like her a lot."

"But you don't date."

"I hang out with her all the _time_."

"You practice at her house, with three other girls, and maybe go out for a bite after. You've done a few gigs together. You share the same table at lunch, and sometimes at the library. Have you even kissed?"

The despair returned. He said wearily, "Kat, I know it's insane. Please don't beat me up any more about it, okay?"

"Okay. Sorry." Her back was still turned to him. "Not like I've got room to talk. Come on, let's get on the road." She walked off towards the dimly lit barn.

9


	2. Guided Tour

Escondido California

"Well, what do you think?"

The minivan idled at the curb of a residential street. Sarah heard Eddie shift in his seat to peer through the window, eyeing the structure in the predawn gloom. "First impression? Haunted house."

"Reform school," Roxanne agreed.

Bobby took a turn. "Frat house; the kind that has trouble hanging on to its charter."

The building was an ancient three-story structure that towered over the neighboring houses and took up a quarter of the block. It was made of some dark brick, trimmed with concrete or sandstone at the windows, doors, and corners; large windows marked the bottom two floors, but they were all made up of separate panes no more than a foot square. Although she'd never seen anything like this on the reservation, it reminded her of some dreary government office like the Bureau of Indian Affairs: a place that, back home, would be furnished with castoffs from agencies with bigger budgets, and never saw a need to impress anyone who came through the door. "I'll hold back until I see the inside."

"Oh, dear. That bad, really?"

"The architecture's unusual, for this region, anyway," Caitlin said. "I don't think I've seen another one like it since we hit town. I'm sure I haven't seen any more of this stone work."

"It's not local; it was brought in, at ruinous expense I'm sure, and put up almost in the middle of nowhere. This building is older than the city charter. It was built as a warehouse, dry goods emporium, and trading post. Eventually, it was surrounded by residences and converted into apartments. Somehow, it escaped the wrecking ball _and _the Historic Preservation Society long enough for Jack to buy it."

"Lucky us," Sarah said.

"Appearances can be deceptive. Notice the window cutouts on the top floor are bricked in? The building's really only two stories tall; the roof has a frontier-style false front and sides, very private. The house faces east, so you can see the sunset from the roof out the open back; I've got plans for a rooftop pool and garden."

"Sounds really nice, as long as we stay on the roof," Eddie said. "What about the rest?"

"Pull on in, hon. let's go inside." The car rolled down the driveway until they were even with the front of the house, where a rolling gate barred the way; once again, Anna had Caitlin use one of her cards. From there, the blacktop curved around the building, ending at a detached six-car garage that stretched across the back of the lot; one door opened as they approached. Inside, she could see that the bays were partitioned into individual garages; she couldn't see what was behind the other doors. They all piled out in the dark, and ambled past a small landscaped lawn and patio towards the back door. This minor security risk puzzled her; the little robot seemed so paranoid about being observed going in and out. Then she noticed that the back and sides of the lot were bounded by a six-foot privacy fence; the back yard and all but one bay of the garage were visible only from the driveway at the rear of the house.

"The front door is usable, but I expect this to be our main entrance." The door had a lighted numeric keypad on the wall beside it. "Eight-digit door codes, kids: your birth dates." She keyed in a number, opened the door, then stood in front of it, facing them; lights flickered on inside. "The roof is supported entirely by the outside masonry, which means that I could gut the interior and start from scratch. There's no pool yet, and we're miles from the beach, but everybody gets their own room." She swung the door wide and let them in.

Ahead of them, a broad uncarpeted hall stretched toward the front of the house; to their right, a large winding stairway led both up and down. "Two basements; I think this used to be an ice house, too. Upstairs is Teen Hall, guys, all yours, with six bedrooms and two baths; I laid out one bath for girls, one for boys, and the sixth bedroom for exercise equipment and Bobby's music stuff." Despite the hard floor, neither voices nor footsteps echoed; the walls, she noticed, were covered in fabric, muffling sounds.

Sarah stooped to examine the floor: it was paved in large flat stones, irregular in shape and closely set; their surfaces were slightly uneven but not enough to make footing unsure. She pressed her palm to one; the surface was cool only for a moment, and then began to give back her hand's heat. She straightened and rejoined the group a few steps farther down. "The stonemasons a hundred years ago really knew their craft; that's quality work."

"Thank you, Sarah. There wasn't a trace of the original floor when Jack bought the place, it was all concrete. The stonework you're admiring is mine." They trooped down the hall, passing doors. "Downstairs bath, storage, and right here you see the dumbwaiter and laundry chute. Two bedrooms down here; Jack can have one for a study. Kitchen next."

"Eddie said, "Wait a minute, that's eight bedrooms; there's seven of us. Take away two …"

Sarah clamped a hand over his mouth and hissed, "You're an idiot. I don't _care _if you can memorize a textbook in an afternoon, you're _still_ an idiot." Roxanne and Bobby stared at him; his ears reddened. Three steps ahead, Caitlin seemed to be paying extra attention to Anna's guided tour.

"Um, we can tour the kitchen later. Kids, look at the living room and tell me what you think."

Caitlin was already past the end of the hall. She looked upwards. "Oh. My."

They reached the end of the hall, and followed Caitlin's gaze, gawking like tourists at the vast space, which extended most of the building's width and up past the nonexistent second floor to massive wooden trusses supporting the ceiling; it looked as though they were standing under an old railroad bridge. What had appeared to be second floor windows from the front of the house formed an upper row, set high on the end wall, glowing softly with the light of false sunrise.

The huge expanse was broken into a number of separate areas by low dividers and different paint and flooring schemes. At one end was a carpeted conversation area with big couches, a fireplace, and a low table that looked made for teenage feet. At the other, a gleaming wooden table graced the formal dining area near the kitchen, with a snack counter and stools connecting the kitchento the common room. In one corner, fifteen feet of wall had been paneled in mirrors with an attached practice rail; the adjacent floor was smooth, honey-colored wood, and at its edge stood a racked stereo system.

Roxanne brought her fists up under her chin. "A _dance floor_?"

"Yup. You like, sweetie?"

"I _love_. This place is like the inside of a magazine."

"It certainly is," said Sarah. "_Just _like." That earned her a dark look from Bobby and Roxanne both.

"Bitchin," Eddie said. "But where's the TV?"

Anna pointed to an open stairway behind them. "Loft upstairs."

"Sweet!" He pounded up the stairs and reappeared over the rail. "You have _got _to see this. Un-frickin-believable!"

They followed. The loft was a relatively cozy space with two couches and a pair of easy chairs, grouped around a TV that looked to be four feet wide, with a rack of video equipment and game consoles beneath it. Eddie faced the console with his arms spread wide. "I'd hug it, if I could get my arms around it."

Bobby and Anna looked over the rail, down at the gymnasium-sized room below, then through the upper tier of windows directly across, at the hills silhouetted by the faintly lightening sky. "The beach house was fine, excellent. But this place is a palace."

The little robot glowed at the praise. "Jack gave me a huge budget to work with. He knew the circumstances we'd be arriving here under; he wanted to soften the blow. Anybody want to see their rooms?"

Another hallway stretched the length of the second floor; Sarah counted four doors on the short side, the one with the TV room, and five on the longer side, which stretched out over the common room below. "Bathrooms are the second door on each side. Bobby, you're the first door on the short side, right across from Sarah." _And why,_ she thought, _are Bobby and I separated from the others by bathrooms? Privacy?_

Bobby reached inside for the light switch and stepped into his new room. "Well, look at that. These aren't my guitars. You bought spares?" Everyone took turns poking a head inside. Bobby's room looked like a larger copy of his old one, with a pair of acoustic guitars in stands by his bed and a couple of framed posters on the walls; without a second bed for Eddie, she'd installed a larger one for him. Nothing fancy, just a spacious, comfortable room. He turned around in a circle. "Feels like home; I like it. Now all I need is a change of clothes."

Anna bobbed her head. "Got you covered, literally. Everybody's got about six sets of clothes in their closet, copies of your favorites; enough to get you started." She smiled at Roxanne. "When Roxanne unpacks her stuff from the car, her closet should be full as ever."

"Oh, joy," the little ditz said. "My life is complete."

"Anna," Caitlin said, "When did you find the _time_?"

"Nearly every day after you left for school. We were only thirty-odd minutes away, and it isn't like I spent hours every day cleaning up after you guys."

Eddie said, "I suppose you learned how from watching _This Old House _reruns."

"And books and such; it was fun." The two bathrooms were clearly gender-specific: while both were equipped with a tiled walk-in shower, the girls' bathroom was larger, and boasted a bidet, an extra-long counter with two sinks, and a big whirlpool tub behind frosted sliding glass doors. "With this setup, you can take a long hot soak without hogging the bathroom," Anna said. _My grandmother still carries water into the house from a pump, _she thought. _What would she say, seeing me surrounded by such extravagance?_

_She'd say that you can live in a mansion or a mud hut and still be a good person, if you don't put things ahead of people; that wealth and poverty are both trials of your virtue; that if she lived in such a place, she'd enjoy the convenience, but there would be times when she'd miss fetching her own water._ She smiled at the image of her grandmother's seamed and smiling face.

"You like it, Sarah?" Anna asked, mistaking her expression.

Without looking at her, she replied, "It's very luxurious. I hope all this soft living doesn't blind us to the nature of our adversary."

Into the uneasy silence that followed, Anna said, "I was harsh to you then, Sarah. I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?"

"Sure," she said, looking right through her. "Forget it."

"Okay. Eddie and Roxanne next, then. Eddie, I'm afraid your room looks kind of generic; I just had no idea what you'd like. I tried to put in a few touches, though." She opened the door for him like a hotel doorman.

Roxanne stood at her open doorway. "Anna, this room is bigger than my last _apartment._" She stepped inside. A few moments later they heard, "Gawd. The _closet_ is bigger than my last apartment."

Again, she noted how Anna had been opening doors in opposing pairs down the hall, yet, when she'd opened Bobby's, they'd passed by her door untouched. _What clever little surprise does she plan to spring on me?_

Eddie stood facing them in the doorway, holding a comic book wrapped in plastic and mounted on a sheet of cardboard; he handled it as if it were the Magna Carta. "Anna, tell me this is a second or third printing."

"Nope. First print, _Dynamo_, issue one. I couldn't duplicate your whole collection, Eddie; some of them would take years of patience to find. But I could locate that one pretty easily. There are only forty-seven left, and every comic collector seems to know who owns them."

He stared at it. "I sold half my collection to buy the one I had, and it was a second. What did you _spend_ on this?"

"Eddie, it's not polite to ask the price of a gift."

"Everybody knows who owns these because they never change hands; somebody's got to _die_ before one of these moves. How did you find it?"

"I had some feelers out. A man at Millennium Coins and Comics found out it was going up for auction at an estate sale, and he bid on it for me."

"At Millennium? You mean Lemke, Jim Lemke?"

"That's him."

"That doesn't make any sense. The guy buys and sells for a living, and he's the biggest cutthroat in the business. Why didn't he buy it himself, and make a couple grand off you on resale? Or, better yet, auction it off?"

"Well… I kind of flirted with him."

He looked scandalized. "You _flirted_ with 'Shrek' Lemke? Women cross _streets_ to avoid him."

"Oh, Eddie, he's not a bad guy, really. He just spent his youth with his nose in comic books, and most of the people he knows are just like him, so his social skills are stunted. He's quite nice, once you get him off the subject of comic books and open him up."

"And this took how long?"

"Oh, maybe three days."

"Forget I asked about the price. You spent a _lot_ more than money." He shook his head. "Shrek Lemke." He disappeared inside his room.

Roxanne popped out of her bedroom door. "This is _so_ nice. I never had my own room before, unless you count that cubby at the Project. To think, I may never hear Kat snore or talk in her sleep again." She grinned at Anna. "Thank you." The little robot smiled back, acting pleased.

"Okay, now we've got the music and exercise room, and Caitlin's."

The last rooms were hard by the back stairway, almost directly above the back door. They looked at the room on the left first. At one end was enough exercise equipment for a small gym; at the other, a comfortable armless chair, more guitars on stands, and a stack of amplifier components in the corner. She watched Bobby run his hand slowly down the curve of a guitar's body, a gesture so sensual she felt her breathing deepen. She mentally shook herself and said, "It looks like Anna went all-out for the boys."

"Oh, I don't know." Caitlin eyed the workout equipment. "I could be spending a lot of time in here."

"A tube preamp," Bobby said, still cupping a hand on the guitar. "Electronika; they used to make radars for the Red Army, or some such. The hum when you turn it on is enough to make you wet your pants."

"I'm sure…" She turned away. "Caitlin, let's see yours."

Their big redhead started through the doorway, then paused and looked sharply at the top of the door. "I didn't notice before … these doors are _tall_."

"Eighty- six inches, all through the house," Anna said. "Thirty-six width. The halls are six feet wide. The lowest ceiling is eleven feet. And, in case you didn't notice, the toilet and bidet are chair-height fixtures on low platforms; plenty of room for legs short and long. Welcome home, hon."

The furniture in Caitlin's room was simple and sturdy: a bed with a high wooden headboard, overstuffed pillows, and a huge teddy bear; a pair of heavy-legged night tables, one by the bed, another next to a large, comfortable-looking chair with a floor lamp beside it. A bookshelf lined the wall behind the chair, and a computer workstation filled another corner. The girl pulled a few books from the shelves. "_A Brief History of Time,_ by Stephen Hawking; Brian Greene's _Elegant Universe_. Michael Behe, _The Edge of Evolution. Compleat Unabridged Shakespeare. _Marcus Aurelius. Voltaire. This is every book I've read since I came to live with you."

"Every time you brought one home, I stocked a copy. Take a look at your computer."

The monitor looked two feet wide; beyond that, it looked like any other computer to Sarah, but Kat regarded it like it was a newborn. "Ooh. I didn't know these were out already." She sat down and brought the system live, calling up specifications. "Multicore processor, three-point-two gigs, eight gig of RAM … two _terabytes_ of memory?"

"Better too much than too little, wouldn't you say?"

"I could run a space launch with this." She dug in, opening files and exploring, making changes. "Ten meg Internet connection…"

"The rest of us might as well move on," Bobby said. "We've lost her."

"Yeah, she'll come out when she gets hungry," Roxanne agreed. "Once a geek, always a geek."

"Unless you want to see the water heater, there's just one room left. Sarah?" The little robot was almost quivering in anticipation. _What's going to pop out at me when I open the door? I'd rather walk barefoot over hot coals than see her idea of appropriate night quarters for me._

"Sure, let's clump down to the other end of the hallway and finish the tour."

The four of them walked the length of the hall, to the unopened door opposite Bobby's. It appeared that the room behind it stretched to the front of the building on one side; if so, it would be by far the largest of the upstairs bedrooms.

Anna stepped in front of her to grasp the doorknob, turned it, pushed the door open, flipped the lights on, and stepped back, all in one smooth motion; you could almost hear the trumpet fanfare. _Ta daa, _she thought sourly_._ But with Bobby and Roxanne eager at her back, there wasn't much choice; she stepped through the door with the others close behind.

The room was huge, almost half the size of the common room, and similarly broken up by function: immediately inside the door was another lounge, similar in layout to the conversation area downstairs, but with very different furniture and no fireplace. The walls were painted a pale blue, and the flooring was wide wooden planks, covered here and there with rugs in Native American patterns. A low partition separated it from the rest of the room; anyone seated would see only the ceiling of the bedroom proper. _What, she thinks I'm going to be entertaining in here?_ She looked over the partition into her sleeping quarters. _Same decorating scheme throughout. Just as bad as I suspected: Trading Post Modern. At least there aren't any pictures of buffalo on the walls, and the rugs look authentic. I guess I'm supposed to feel at home in here. _The chairs, couches, and bed were all the same style: massive, framed in wood, varnished but unstained; the four-poster bed looked like it had been constructed from fence posts and barn beams. _Hope it's all more comfortable than it looks._

Apparently, it was; Roxanne dropped into a couch and sank slightly into the cushion, wriggling her butt. "Nice. But why two living rooms?"

"The upper floor is Teen Hall, remember. Voices carry from the main room and the loft. I thought you guys might have occasion to all get together and talk in private."

She stepped past the divider into the inner room. On either side of the huge bed - _Two-person bed, the same size as Bobby's, _she thought; _tell me again how you're not trying to push us together -_ stood lighted display cases containing examples of pottery and weaving, the items in one case considerably older and ratty-looking. A few sideboard tables with terra-cotta-colored lamps stood against the walls. Instead of a built-in closet, three identical antique wooden armoires stood against one wall; one was partly open, revealing mirrors in the doors. _Everyone knows I'm into Native American history, but this is like sleeping in a museum. How much of this stuff has "Made in India" stamped on the bottom, I wonder?_

"This is gorgeous," she heard Bobby say. "Look at the light coming in."

She'd been appraising the furnishings so intently, she hadn't paid much attention to the architecture; now she noticed that the east wall of the room had floor-to-ceiling- windows, identical to the upper row in the common room, which must also appear from outside as part of the second story front. The silhouette of the hills against the lightening sky was pretty, she admitted, and did remind her of home. The truss work of the ceiling had been covered with drywall and painted, not white, but the same blue as the walls; but something was different. She studied the surface: the ceiling and walls down to eye level had been given some odd faux treatment, dots no bigger than the head of a pencil eraser; she counted eleven different colors. From three steps back, it all blended into an indeterminate hue that changed subtly where the table lamps washed the walls with light. As she was studying the walls, her eye fell on the side table closest to her bed, and several framed photos propped upon it.

They were her grandparents' photos, the ones she'd kept on the bookshelf in her bedroom.

She sprang at them and picked one up. It was the same, down to the raw wood frame. She looked more closely, and recognized an almost-forgotten notch in the corner. They weren't copies, they were the originals. Her hand trembled slightly. "How did you … what are they doing here?"

"I knew we'd come here someday, probably with just the clothes we stood in. I thought you'd need them more here than there, so I copied them and brought the originals here. I couldn't duplicate your grandfather's flute or the baby clothes your grandmother made you, but I could do this."

She picked them up, one at a time. They were all there, her framed treasures: her grandmother's portrait, taken when Sarah was a child; her grandfather carving on the porch; the group photo, grandparents, parents, and sisters, and her at age ten.

"How long have they been here?"

"Almost two months. I waited until the risk of losing them seemed excessive."

She continued to pick up pictures: the inside of the one-room house where her grandparents had lived since before she was born, also taken when she was a child; baking bread with Grandmother as a teenager; several others. She took a trembling breath.

"This is the most stunning invasion of privacy you've ever perpetrated on me. I'd given these up in my heart, and here they are, raised from the dead like ghouls." She set the last one down. "I kissed those copies at night sometimes, thinking they'd been touched by my grandparents' hands. Now I learn that I was feeling sentiment for … things. Copies. Imitations. Fakes." She turned to look at the little machine-thing. "Like you." She turned back to the photos. "And I'm expected to keep quiet about it, I suppose; take my little gifts and my big room and be grateful. I'd rather they'd burned." She picked up the photo of the inside of her grandmother's house: the compact little cabin, smaller than the room she stood in, that was combination kitchen, living and dining area, and bedroom. She almost put it down when something in it caught her eye, and made her look at it more closely.

The photo showed an oblique view of about half of the bed. With a shock and a flood of memory, she recognized it. Her grandfather had made it as a wedding gift to her grandmother; she had shared it with him almost every night of their married life. Her only child had been born in it. When Grandfather died, she'd burned it; not in grief, she'd said, but sending it on as a parting gift to him, and to show him she'd never share it with another man, so he'd know who she meant to join after her time on earth was done. That was eight years ago, and she still slept on a mattress on the floor.

That bed's twin stood two steps away.

_She couldn't have bought it; she copied it from this photo, and built the other furniture in the same style. _She looked down at the rug under her feet, and was suddenly certain that it was woven on San Carlos Reservation, probably by someone she knew, one of the old folks who still did such things; likewise the little peridot sculptures in the lighted display case nearest her. She swung the glass door open and removed a small painted vase. She turned it over, and the instant she read the signature, she twitched and clutched it with both hands; it was a Thomas Redbird, one of three still in existence, and easily worth twenty thousand dollars. She couldn't guess at the cost of the small figurines that shared the case.

She put the vase back carefully and walked around the bed to the other case, running her hand over the footboard of the bed on the way. _This is only a copy too; why does it fill me with wonder, when the pictures only angered me? Because the pictures were copied by running them through a machine; this was done with the simplest materials, and created with study and time. Just like my grandfather did it._

She opened the case and reached for a faded pot. And stopped, with her fingers inches from the little object, as she studied it. Age radiated from it, hundreds of years of it; perhaps it predated the Apache domestication of the horse, when her people abandoned farming and became nomadic hunters. She was afraid to touch it; it seemed it might crumble under her fingers. She closed the case gently.

And then the dawn broke over the hills beyond the windows, and flooded the room with light. The transformation was breathtaking. The walls and ceiling disappeared, replaced by a pale blue sky drifted with wispy clouds that moved slowly, flaring with reds and golds and greens as the sun continued to rise. The illusion was perfect; she'd been up many times to greet the sun outdoors when she lived on the reservation, and this felt just like the moments before the dawn wind kicked up and brought its chill greeting to her skin. _A person would rise early every day, just to experience this._ She stood transfixed for minutes, all caught up in the beauty of it. She turned around, and saw Bobby and Roxanne still in the opening between the sitting room and the bedroom. She'd completely forgotten she wasn't alone.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Roxanne's voice was cool, detached. "You know, this is the only room in the house with this view. The bottom floor windows are all frosted, and the only other place you can look out the second floor windows is in the loft, from thirty feet away. She must have been thinking of this as your room before she drove the first nail." She stepped close to the wall and examined it; the colors were changing, dusty rose and turquoise and purple appeared. "No bio ever came up with this paint technique; doing a room this size would take months. And I can't imagine how she came up with the color palette. But I know that none of it came out of a magazine. It came from _her_." The girl looked at her, and through her, in a way that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise. "She put her soul into this room, and offered it to you with both hands. Even if you hated it, the decent thing, the human thing to do would be to say 'thank you'." Still the cool and dispassionate stare that was so unlike her. "But you're not capable, are you? Guess the _programming_ didn't take. You think about it, it's really whack. Since you were little, you had parents, grandparents, a whole community to teach you how to be a decent caring human being. _She_ had our sorry examples and TV, when she wasn't taking care of our every need. It just rocks me, to see how much _better_ she is at it than you." She turned and left.

She braced herself for a glare and some scathing remark from Bobby; but he turned stiffly and showed her his back before he spoke. "When she left, she was crying. _Crying._ I've known her for two years and never saw her cry. I didn't know she _could_." She came up behind him and impulsively reached for him; before her hand came within a foot of his shoulder, he sensed it somehow, and made a shrugging-off gesture that stopped her cold. "You've got a rare talent, you know, Sarah? You can crush the heart of _anyone _who cares about you." He walked out, just as the sun rose to full daylight and the magic disappeared, leaving her alone in the sunlit room.

14


	3. Welcome to the Club

Bobby found Eddie just outside Sarah's door, playing a video game in the lounge. He was feeling strangely detached, shocky, washed out; he'd heard that suicides rescued unexpectedly at the last minute felt this way.

"So, dude, how was your peek into Sarah's bedroom?"

"Huh? Beautiful. Unexpected. Sad."

"Yeah. Peeked into Kat's: weird. Half pink lace and teddy bears, and the other half's the bridge of the _Enterprise_. When I first walked in, she was so into what she was doing on the computer, I coulda ransacked her undies drawer and walked out."

"You didn't."

"Neh." He sighed. "But the idea of snatching a little souvenir was awful tempting." He returned his attention to the screen.

"What happened to the girls?"

"Anna bolted for the bathroom. Rox came by just a minute ago, headed the same way." When he turned down the hall, Eddie called him back. "Forget it, dude. Secret girl rites going on in there; 'tis death for men to enter." The ape zapped a few more zombies and said, "Seriously, if you stick your nose in there and try to help, they won't thank you for it; girls take care of their own. Kat looked like she was about ready to come up for air. I got a dollar says the moment she pops her head out of her room, her pack instinct leads her straight to the bathroom."

He looked down the hallway at the closed door. _Anna, one of their own? Maybe something good can be salvaged from this disaster, after all._

-0-

Anna surveyed her wrecked makeup in the bathroom mirror. "_Stop_ it, why don't you." Her eyes were still streaming; wiping seemed to make it worse, so she'd quit and was just letting them run down her face and into the sink.

She recognized Roxanne by her tread as she approached the door, and by her breathing as she stopped just outside and knocked.

"Sweetie, I'm kind of busy."

"I know you're not peeing in there, Anna. Open up."

She scrubbed at her cheeks and opened the door. The girl looked at her and blinked.

"It won't stop," she said helplessly.

"Well, _that _face is totaled. Might as well wash off and start over." Roxanne stepped past and pushed the door shut. She pointed to the toilet. "Sit." She wet a facecloth.

Anna sat. "Everything I do seems to make it worse. Guess my emotional threshold needs readjusted."

"Don't you dare." The girl wiped gently at her cheeks and under her eyes. "You want to be human; this is part of it. People you love are going to disappoint you, sure as anything. That says as much about you as them. Love paints people better than they are; it's a rare kind of love that _really _takes in a whole person, faults and all. Sooner or later, you get your nose rubbed in reality, and you take your love to the next level, or it starts to dissolve." The mascara was long gone; Roxanne continued to wipe her down with the damp cloth, over her cheeks, jaw, forehead, ears. "You don't know how lucky you are, that your nose doesn't plug up when you go on a jag. Jeez, is this really the second time I've done this in … what, fifteen hours? She's bullying you, you know. Those half-hearted attempts to push back only encourage her. Just once, you should tell her off with a full head of steam, and mean it; it'd do both of you some good." She looked down at Anna's dress. "I never had to pull plutonium dust out of cotton, or whatever this stuff is, but if you vacuum it really good before you get it wet, and then soak it overnight in Woolite, you might have a chance of saving it." She stopped. "What?"

"Roxanne Spaulding, what do _you _know about laundry chores?"

The girl grinned. "You think I'd let my _mom_ do my clothes? Even if she didn't ruin 'em, she'd have fainted dead away at my underwear." Her face grew serious. "I did all the housekeeping at home. Not only cuz Mom worked till way after I got home from school; I'd be embarrassed to bring my friends home to _her_ idea of a clean house. Small as our apartment was, it didn't take much to mess it up. You had to stay on top of it all the time."

"Well, what _happened_? Eddie I can understand; his foster parents spoiled him rotten. But you must account for thirty percent of my housework. I can tell where you've been by following the trail of dirty dishes and clothes on the floor."

The grin faded to a Mona Lisa smile. "It was _your_ deal, remember? At first I did it cuz I was pissed at you, but after a while, it just felt too good to stop. I'm sorry, really. I'll keep things neat from now on, promise."

"I don't mind, I'm just amazed. I'll never figure out people."

"'Other people,' Anna."

She smiled. "Other people, sweetheart. God, I love you."

Roxanne went back to the sink, rinsed the cloth, and returned. She started to wipe at Anna's short hair, smoothing it back. "My mother wasn't ready to be a parent at seventeen … hell, she wouldn't be ready _now_. She was a spoiled Army brat who snapped her fingers at her parents' rules and partied every night instead of doing her school work. But my grandfather let her have her way about everything … right up to her getting pregnant. She wouldn't tell who the father was, and wouldn't talk about it. I bet all she would have had to do to stay in good with him was have an abortion, or put me up for adoption. Instead she had her baby, got disowned, moved out, and went to work. She didn't have any job skills, no high school diploma; she worked long hours for chump change and left me with a neighbor until I was old enough for school. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment; I slept on a sofa bed in the living room. It was all she could afford.

"Guys were the only hobby she had. Or the only bad habit, however you look at it. She had a new boyfriend every month until she caught one cornering _me_ in the kitchen; she nearly clawed his eyes out before she pushed him out the door. After that, she stopped bringing men home. What I'm trying to tell you is … my mom doesn't have half your motherhood skills, but nobody ever tried harder. I'm not about to forget that, so I'm never gonna call you Mom." She rested her hand, washcloth and all, at the back of Anna's neck. "But it's easy to see why Bobby does; nobody deserves it more."

Tears sprang up fresh. "Oh, bugs. Thank God my tank's almost dry."

Two knocks sounded at the door, and then Caitlin came in, taking a single step inside. "Did I miss something?"

"Nothing much, Sis. Pocahontas was feeling cruel."

The big redhead looked at Anna. "Oh. There's _got_ to be something I can do, isn't there?"

"You might get her a change of clothes. Is everything still in the car?"

"Yes." She turned back to the door. "More bags." She paused. "I'll bring everything in and sort them out." She took a breath. "I'll just lay your stuff on the bed in Mr. Lynch's room, and bring you something. Kay?"

"Thanks, hon. A bunch." She watched the door close. "Sweetheart … is she going to be okay?"

"She likes you. Plenty. And she knows, deep down, you're a better match for him. But crushes … don't respect logic. She's wondering what's wrong with _her_, you know? And she's never been comfortable in her own skin; not before the change or after." The girl took a deep breath. "I'd say 'give it time,' but it's been two years already." She rinsed the rag and hung it up. "I don't get it. Knocking down brick walls with her fist and being bulletproof is no big shakes anymore, but having to wear a D cup still has her wondering who she is." She sat cross legged on the floor next to her.

"My mom, in her infinite wisdom, once decided we needed a dog to guard our one bedroom apartment." She shook her head. "As if we couldn't replace everything we owned with two hundred dollars and a trip to the Salvation Army store. And, being Mom, she brings home, I kid you not, a twelve-week-old Great Dane puppy that somebody gave her. The dog was too big for our digs from day one; by the time it was six months old, the poor thing couldn't even turn around in our living room if the sofa bed was down. And it just kept getting _bigger_; at eight months it weighed more than I did, and ate more. It slept on the floor by my bed, and at night when it was quiet, I swear you could hear its bones creak as it grew. It was up to a hundred and thirty, and still growing, when we finally had to give it away." The girl looked intently at her.

"The last six weeks at the Project, I thought about that dog a lot, watching Kat. You know we were almost the same size back then. Then, she starts eating like a horse and putting on height; like, an inch and a half, two inches a _week_; good thing our school uniforms were coveralls. She's getting a new size every week; shoes too. She's afraid it's a gland problem, pituitary or thyroid or something. But she goes to the school doctor, Doctor Ivery, every week just like the rest of us; he's got to notice, but he doesn't really say anything to her about it. When she brings it up, he says it's a 'second puberty,' kinda rare but nothing to worry about, but he sets her up for an exam twice a week. And now the servers at the canteen are pushing _two_ trays at her every meal, with orders to feed her anytime she's hungry, day or night.

"Next, she's got trouble with blurry vision: bad news for somebody who already wears glasses thick as bottle bottoms. Except the new prescription is _weaker_, not stronger, and it changes faster than they can grind new lenses. A week of eyestrain and her vision's twenty-twenty." She grinned. "Then one morning she comes to class late and won't uncross her arms, even to write, cuz she couldn't get into her bra, and barely got zipped up. Again, thank God for coveralls. She said her bra'd been bothering her all afternoon the day before; that night, she noticed a difference, but she just thought her period might be early. Next morning, she wakes up all light-headed and _starving_; her ribs are sticking out and her belly's flat and growling like a dog, and she looks like Ivery snuck into her room and did implant surgery. Goes from Milla Jovovich to Pam Anderson in twenty-four hours." She shook her head. "It scared her, big time. A little later, when she got stronger than Ahh-nold, it was like, 'ho hum, what's next'."

"What can I do for her, sweetie?" Her own troubles were gone from her mind; she'd deal with Sarah, one way or another.

"You're doing it, Anna. She's another one who won't ever call you Mom, but she's desperate for a girlfriend, somebody who's closer to her age than her sister. If you want the job, it's yours." She added, "She could use a boyfriend, too, but that's not gonna happen till she gets out of her own way."

Two knocks sounded at the door; Caitlin stepped in with a bundle of clothing. "I brought some eyeliner, not that you really need it. One of my lip glosses, too." She dropped her eyes. "Um, there was quite a selection with the underwear. I went a little fancy."

_God. She's dressing me up. For Jack, or to make me feel better? She's a trooper, either way._ "Hon, I'm sure anything you picked out is perfect." She smiled at them both. "Ladies, thank you. I feel like a new girl. Do you two have any idea what you just did for me?" She stood up, kissed the top of Roxanne's head, and circled Caitlin's waist for a quick hug as she took the offered bundle. "I'm headed for the shower. Hon, it's been a long day without much sleep. Do you think you'd be up to coming out with me in a few hours?"

The big redhead looked down at her. "Just give me two or three hours' sleep and a shower. What's up?"

She grinned. "I'm taking you up on your offer. Believe it or not, I've got to go _shopping_."


End file.
